From Obedience to Commanding

The fourth   session of the 36^th  round of the Academy Branch Workshops was held on August   8^th    2019 at 9:35 a.m. This meeting was held by Mr. Amin Dezhakam as the guest speaker, Mr. Alireza as the master of ceremony and companion Reza as the secretary. The weekly agenda was: “From Obedience to Commanding”.

Mr. Amin: I am grateful to God for being here among the male companions. The number and the discipline of male companions have increased and I hope you get liberated along with your travelers.

Any agenda selected in Congress60 has lots of experiences and contemplations behind it and that is why this agenda has been selected. The agenda “From Obedience to Commanding” has many usages.

When I look at my past and analyse  my failures in life, I conclude that I did not pay attention to the educations and trainings, because I thought that I am an expert and thinker in everything and I thought I had a great genius and intelligence; therefore, I firmly and deeply believed that no one is competent enough so that I can learn from them! That is why all my abilities and achievements in my life were utilized against me.

Many years passed from those years. I went through lots of trials and errors.  A human being does not get the experience unless they feel the bitterness  of his own decisions. When they feel that bitterness, they change the way of living. In my adolescence and youth, I was quickly rushing into the dark and I felt worse and worse and Life showed me its bitter side, in that time I found out that all the paths I was moving on were dead end, I had a very miserable and confusing life.

At these moment, human being must find out what the causes are, and it is a very important start point. Many people try to find who has caused the problem for them. It took me many years so that I realized that there are two questions embedded in our problems:

1. Who has caused the problem?
2. Why has this problem happened?

I understood that when a castle collapses, there must be an act of treachery, a treacherous person must open the gate to the enemies. There is so much fanfare that no one asks who has opened the door up to the enemies. The person who enters the castle is guilty but it is better not to focus on the enemy but to find and punish the treacherous person who opened the gate up to the enemy, because if the person did not open the gate, the enemies could not enter the castle. Then finding the cause is more important than revenge, the person who does not retaliate must have some knowledge, they should know why they do not retaliate.

Some may say it shows my own weakness if I accept the treachery has happened inside myself, so I can never believe it!

But these are the processes which must take place, when I focused on my own faults and failures, I could disregard the outside factors and this is known as Self-PURIFICATION in Congress60. Principally, purification takes place for a person who accepts that there is an internal problem in them. This happens for a person who accepts that the betrayer is inside their Self and impure particles  of the Self are ready and seeking for an opportunity to harm that person. As the person accepts this reality, self-purification starts. If I do not accept this, I always seek to accuse others (of my problems). In this case, what should be purified? Nothing, because the dirt is considered to be outside us and self-purification is meaningless.

Where does this event manifest itself? In obedience. This person would be attacked by their friends and relatives so much that they accept that they have to be obedient, because just now they have realized that there is a problem inside me and I am not able to find it myself. In this context, the guide  or the master can identify the problem; therefore, reaching the obedience status is a very long way and a   long path must be passed so that I can understand that I should be obedient (to get rid of my problems), in that time, they will never interrupt you nor do they express their own views. Therefore, as they attend the classroom, they just listen to their guide carefully and do not try to find the master’s weaknesses and they do not intend to impose their views on their guide. I had the same problem myself, I was always struggling with my masters and wanted to impose my idea upon my master; therefore, instead of receiving my master’s information, the teacher intended to kick me out of classroom.

Maybe a guide asks a  pupil to write 20 pages of exercises from page 20 to 40, but the pupil thinks that  it is more interesting for me if I write from page 20 to 30, or the pupil is asked to write the educational CD of  Faith but instead they write the CD of Knowledge and they may justify themselves that I am doing right! However, this person is not an obedient pupil! No one is forced to come to Congress60, when I come with my own authority and select my own guide myself, I have to be obedient. When the guide or the master is teaching, my mind must not be involved with judges, instead I have to listen carefully and act according to what I have learned, I am not allowed to judge my teacher, hereafter, I can evaluate the outcome. When a person accurately does whatever they are supposed to do, and acts upon all the orders made by the teacher, then, they can see the outcome. If you compare a person who tidily writes all the CDs with good hand-writing and penmanship with a person who has written them very untidily and incompletely,  you will realise which person has been successful. The most powerful and disciplined places in the world are the Army and Symphony Orchestras where everyone is obedient. If a person wants to treat his addiction, they must be strong, and in order to be strong, one must be obedient. If you see the great figures of Congress60, you will notice that they are the most obedient ones and I myself once decided to be obedient so that I could pass the dark.

Being obedient does not mean being weak. The Self deceives us by always saying that “Are you a suppressed person who cannot decide for your own affairs?” The dark Forces enter our mind in this way and try to convince you that you are weak if you listen to your guide and act upon their orders. While  its opposite is right. When you select a person as your guide, you must be obedient to him.

However, it is important not to be an obedient for the dark forces. I have tried to improve these three parameters in myself.

Thank you for listening to me.

Translated by Elahe

Photographer: Companion Majed